Week 1 B: Social media use today

     Social media today is a funny thing. On one hand it can be a useful tool for keeping in touch, for promoting your business or art, for discovering, for voicing ideas with a huge community or for simply passing the time looking at memes. On the other, less healthy, side it can be an unhealthy source of instant gratification, a depressing pit of terrible Tik Tok trends, a whirlpool of trolls and keyboard warriors or just simply an addiction.

    Overall I have positive thoughts about social media and its applications. Being someone who pretty much grew up with social media around it is hard to imagine life without it. I still remember when Myspace came out. How could I know that it would forever change the way I interacted with my peers. Although now I can't imagine life without it, I was never really very into the whole social media idea until much later in my life. Throughout high school I much preferred meeting up with my friends at the beach over chatting in some messenger service. In fact, after high school and throughout the entirety of my twenties I would only visit social media a handful of times.

    These days I use social media quite often. I use Facebook for personal stuff like keeping in contact with old friends who still live on Kauai or with family who live far away. I find myself scrolling Facebook laughing at a good meme as well. My time on Instagram only started about 5 years ago as a platform to showcase food that I had made. I was still a chef at the time so this just came naturally of course. Over the course of the pandemic my Instagram page has turned into strictly just my photography. I still use the story feature to showcase things I make in the kitchen though. Lastly there's Tik Tok....I have a love hate relationship with Tik Tok. At first I was a certified hater of the platform! I thought it was the stupidest thing with the stupidest people posting on it. I more or less still feel this way but I have now managed to follow enough accounts that align with what I want to see that its no longer as infuriating to scroll through the app. What I see too much of, on Tik Tok especially, but in social media in general is trolling and bullying. People hide behind an account with no profile picture and no content to say some of the most ignorant things I have ever read. I get especially upset when I see ignorant comments on the Hawaii Tik Tok accounts I follow. Being someone who grew up in the islands I have a part of me that feels I still need to be protective, even if I know its juts some internet troll talking about things they know nothing about. 

    As of late I am trying to change my view of social media once again. I need to transition from seeing it as a place to kill time or a place to just post pictures, to seeing it as a business tool that can help me grow my photography. Once I start seeing it as a tool and using it as such the possibilities are endless.